GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Hardness. The ability to resist being scratched-or hardness-is one of the most useful properties for identifying minerals. Hardness is determined by the ability of one mineral to scratch another. Federick Mohs, a German mineralogist, produced a hardness scale (table 5) using a set of ten standard minerals.

Detailed explanation-2: -Mineral gets scratched. Mineral must be between 2 and 3. Two minerals with equal hardness will scratch each other.

Detailed explanation-3: -The hardness of a mineral is mainly controlled by the strength of the bonding between the atoms and partly by the size of the atoms. It is a measure of the resistance of the mineral to scratching, the Mohs scale is for natural minerals.

Detailed explanation-4: -Scratch hardness is defined as the hardness of a material when it is scratched by a stylus dragged along its surface under a given load. Unlike pure indentation-based hardness tests, scratch hardness defines the resistance of material to plowing (i.e., a combination of indentation cum sliding) by a hard stylus.